Unsafe Pakistan

Wishful thinking

More extremist attacks—and establishment fantasies

THE 16-hour terrorist assault on a naval base in the middle of Karachi, which ended on Monday May 23rd, was brazen even by the recent standards of the Pakistani Taliban and its associates. As ever, official confusion, or obfuscation, initially reigned about what actually happened. The interior minister, Rehman Malik, said that no more than six attackers were involved (including two who escaped). He also said that the 11 Chinese and six American technicians working at the base were never taken hostage. But the initial report the navy lodged with the Karachi police said up to 15 raided the base. And suggestions circulated that Chinese had been taken hostage, before the Chinese foreign ministry denied them.

The raid by the Pakistani Taliban on Mehran base was the most troubling terrorist attack on the country's armed forces in two years. The attackers killed at least ten Pakistani guards in gun battles, turning the site into a war zone. Once again, terrorists made Pakistan's armed forces look sadly amateur.

The assailants used nothing more than a ladder to climb over a back wall of the base. Then, exploiting a blind spot between two security cameras, they moved 1.5km (about a mile) inside the sprawling facility, blowing up one American-built high-tech spy plane worth $35m and badly damaging a second. A brilliantly executed strike, it seemed to benefit from inside knowledge.

Javed Hussain, a retired brigadier who served with Pakistan's elite commandos, says that such attacks could “completely demoralise” the armed forces. This one comes soon after the raid by American special forces on Osama bin Laden. It was a humiliation that the American team could fly in, kill bin Laden and return to Afghanistan before the Pakistani army knew anything of it.

Since some of Pakistan's jihadist groups declared war on their country in 2007, they have attacked air-force bases, buses carrying servicemen and at least five offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the military spy agency that spawned and nurtured many of the extremist outfits. Most damagingly, a squad of gunmen shot their way into the army's national headquarters at Rawalpindi in 2009, an attack lasting nearly 24 hours in which they took hostages and killed 16 soldiers.

Many are now wondering how safe is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Security is multi-layered, making it highly unlikely that terrorists could seize a whole bomb. But an assault might perhaps yield some components. The consistent success of extremists in recruiting sympathisers within the armed forces makes this a worrying possibility. The Pakistani Taliban said this week that it would not attack a nuclear installation, because “Pakistan is the only Muslim nuclear-power state”. Be as reassured by that as you will.

Many in Pakistan, including in the armed forces, think the United States is a bigger threat to the country than the jihadists are. Pakistan is desperately appealing to China. Much has been made of a trip there from which the prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, has just returned.

The government appears to see China as some kind of replacement for the Americans in Pakistan, and perhaps in Afghanistan too. Much is fantasy. Even the Chinese privately urge Pakistan to put down the extremists, repair relations with America and get its economy moving.

At the weekend, the defence minister, Ahmad Mukhtar, announced that China would be taking over Gwadar, a deep-water Pakistani port on the Arabian Sea, turning it into a naval base. Currently, the port is run under contract by the Port of Singapore Authority. That contract is being challenged in the Pakistani courts by the provincial government, which could open the way to China taking over. However, Hamayoun Khan, of the National Defence University in Islamabad, insists that China's interest in Gwadar remains chiefly commercial. Under an ambitious scheme, it could be developed to take goods by road and rail between Gwadar and south-west China. More than anything, says Mr Khan, Pakistan serves China's interests by becoming safe and secure. This week, the government in Beijing said the Gwadar takeover plan had come as news to China.